No surprise: The Thief-in-Chief’s “princess” acts as though the law doesn’t apply to her, because when has it ever?

Hot take: This news will change exactly zero opinions about the Trump Crime Family… but the NYTimes is (further) beclowning itself, because the suits responsible for assigning front-page headlines have decided they can’t back down now…

Lots of 2016 comparisons being thrown around, but this can’t be a case of ignorance, carelessness, or even the search for convenience. This is a function of pure hubris. She did it because she thought the rules, well litigated in 2016, didn’t apply to her. https://t.co/3YvAbu9F5w

A review by White House ethics officials revealed that throughout much of 2017, Trump often discussed or relayed official White House business using a private email account with a domain that she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner. https://t.co/5IXUBOofxy

The White House Counsel’s Office did not have access to Ivanka's personal account and could not review it without possibly violating privileged communications with her attorneys. So the first daughter's lawyers got to decide what was relevant and what to hold back.

Ivanka made $3.9 million from the family's DC hotel in 2017 — the hotel that is supposed to remit profits to the Treasury, hosts foreign diplomats, and which is the target of lawsuits alleging POTUS is violating emoluments provisions of the Constitution https://t.co/gR0sYIxpMH

https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00Anne Lauriehttps://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgAnne Laurie2018-11-20 04:55:552018-11-20 05:19:39Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Second Time, As Farce

“What fills me with doubt and dismay is the degradation of the moral tone. Is it or is it not a result of Democracy? Is ours a ‘government of the people by the people for the people,’ or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?”

On the moral tone, I was just thinking how much I wish we could go back to agreeing on certain norms. You don’t denigrate a veteran’s service. You never disparage the family of a fallen soldier. I can criticize the military but the President never does publicly. The daily assault is…well, why bother to tell this crew? I’m exhausted.

Wombats, the chubby and beloved, short-legged marsupials native to Australia, are central to a biological mystery in the animal kingdom: How do they produce cube-shaped poop? Patricia Yang, a postdoctoral fellow in mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, set out to investigate.
[snip]
“The first thing that drove me to this is that I have never seen anything this weird in biology. That was a mystery,” said Yang. “I didn’t even believe it was true at the beginning. I Googled it and saw a lot about cube-shaped wombat poop, but I was skeptical.” Source

So let’s see if the media goes after Ivanka with the zeal it went after Secretary Clinton. Looking forward to Democrats asking the FBI to investigate whether Ivanka shared or received classified information.

Think back to that article you posted yesterday. The “conservatives” are hungry for this idiocy. There’s no equivalent demand on the left. That’s why you won’t see wall-to-wall coverage of the Ivanka stuff. That’s not to say that the Times shouldn’t exercise some journalistic integrity.

@NotMax: I’m not buying that fish tale. It would take a looooonnnnnggggg time for a body to decay enough for the head to separate from the body just by the other deer pulling on it. That head is not near decayed enough to have reached that point. Also, the “surviving” deer would die from the exhaustion of thrashing around trying to free himself from the other.

3rdly, deer do not get entangled while dancing cheek to cheek, which is what the picture shows.

@Immanentize: I suspect the dead buck had been shot earlier in the week but the hunter who shot it wasn’t able to track it. This hunter came across the carcass and thought, “That’s a nice rack, I wouldn’t mind hanging it on my wall. Too bad the guy couldn’t find it.” Then shot his own deer, which also had a rather impressive rack, and thought,

@Baud: Ditto this. And the MSM allows liars like David French to go on TV and claim that HRC had “top secret” information in her emails, while Ivanka did not, without correcting him. We are in the worst timeline.

Canadian curling lived up to its freewheeling, no-holds-barred reputation on Sunday as an Olympic champion’s team was kicked out of a tournament because they were “extremely drunk”.

Ryan Fry, who won curling gold for Canada at the 2014 Winter Olympics, and his teammates Jamie Koe, Chris Schille, and DJ Kidby forfeited their final match at the Red Deer Curling Classic after complaints from opponents and fans.

“They went out to curl and they were extremely drunk and breaking brooms and swearing and just unacceptable behaviour that nobody wants to watch or hear or listen to and it was just ‘enough was enough,’” facility manager Wade Thurber told CBC Sports.

“There was some damage in the locker room and other teams complaining about their stuff being kicked around in the locker room. So at the end of the day, it was like ‘OK, that’s enough of this gong show.’ The committee for the bonspiel collectively decided that we needed to remove them from the spiel for this year and what happens down the road, I’m not sure yet.”

Ben Wikler (@benwikler) Tweeted:
Out of 30,000 public service applicants, the Trump/Devos team forgave the student loans of only 96 people. That’s a 99.68% rejection rate. Can you imagine deciding 10y ago to take lower salary & work in public service, counting on loan forgiveness—only to get this rejection now? https://twitter.com/benwikler/status/1064355885751943170?s=17

Ben Wikler (@benwikler) Tweeted:
A friend of mine, encouraged by the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, has been working in public interest jobs for years—and is now suddenly rethinking life plans. Right now, there are 550,000 student borrowers in the program. + who knows how many who’d planned to enroll. https://twitter.com/benwikler/status/1064356772146757632?s=17

@NotMax: These anti-Vaxxers in NC are probably not religious morons. They may be using the religious exemption to avoid vaxxing but since this is a Waldorf School, they are mostly likely leftie crunchy anti-science types.

@Baud: yup.. Former nude model to bring back class in the White House after that Princeton/Harvard grad destroyed it.
I hate all of them. I think we need wombat cubes surrounding the white house until the trumps vacate.

I might go troll some people on Facebook who were Deeply Concerned about national security and the public’ right to know in 2016 and rub their noses in it.

Right wing media has already given them their go-to reply. It’s that Ivanka is not a government employee. I responded to one of them that that opens up a whole ‘nother can of worms, I never heard back. (That’s the problem with spoonfeeding talking points to people who are too dumb to understand what they’re saying.)

Well they could, following the old-fashioned Bipartisan principle whereby Democrats appoint Republicans to important positions and get betrayed at inconvenient times. That’s what the MSM would like and expect them to do…

Or, in the spirit of the new normal, where norms, rules, traditions and even laws don’t matter so much no more, and in a climate where the Wave that put Democrats in a position of power would like some return on their investment of time, energy, money and enthusiasm, it might be an idea for Democrats in the House to investigate the living hell out of the Tang(erine) Dynasty’s terribly lax electronic communications policy and practices. And every time the Media raises a pearl-clutching yelp of outrage, throw them a nice, juicy bone from the fly-crowned mountain of meaty scandal they’re bound to uncover.

That way lies evidence of treason and collusion, and you never know, the bean-counters over at Media Money Inc might even grow to like it.

(Psssst. I think this may be exactly what they’re planning on doing anyway. Don’t let the GOP know.)

@danielx: After all she is still guilty of being Hillary. Imagine sarcasm front. Also, with Ivanka’s emails, we are about to see a classic illustration of IOKIYAR from not only Republicans, but all the usual suspects in MSM (Chris Cillzza for instance, who wrote endlessly on Hillary’s emails, has not even twitted about this story today.)

@NotMax: This was not a religious decision – they used the religious clause because that’s how they could get around the requirement to vaccinate their kids. These are affluent folks who buy into the vaccine nonsense – unfortunately, we all suffer as a result.

A federal judge barred the Trump administration on Monday from refusing asylum to immigrants who cross the southern border illegally.
U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar issued a temporary restraining order after hearing arguments in San Francisco. The request was made by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, which quickly sued after President Donald Trump issued the ban this month in response to the caravans of migrants that have started to arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Tigar, an Obama nominee, wrote in his restraining order.

It’s the latest in a series of court failures for the Trump administration, especially on the issue of immigration. Judges have also rejected Trump’s executive order on “sanctuary cities” and his efforts to deny DACA protections to Dreamers, and in September, a federal court ordered the administration to end its “zero tolerance” policy that separated migrant parents and their children.

@germy: Great. Also the President they love and worship cannot even get the name right for the town that burned down in a Congressional District he carried 56% to 36% in 2016. So we may be libtards, but they are simply morons.

Maybe she and her husband used personal email because they knew the hit on Hillary was purely political, and would never be enforced re: anyone else. And it isn’t, as they’ve seen, because they know Trump uses a cell phone that isn’t secure.

@Lounger: Isn’t Asheville a more or less liberal enclave? And Waldorf Schools have long been popular with those who know something about them. Their instructional methods have at times been suggested as models, esp for early education.

Amy Chozick
‏Verified account
@amychozick
Sep 17
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From the studio that brought you The West Wing, The Wire and Friends….comes Chasing Hillary! I love television and could not be more excited about Warner Bros developing my book into a TV drama…

It never ends. There’s another tv drama hit job out about the Clintons our right now.

They’ll release this one the day after Labor Day prior to the 2020 election.

You sort of idly wonder how long it can go on. 25 years? 50 years? Is it possible for Amy Chozick to make an entire career out of dishonest coverage of the Clintons like Maureen Dowd did? A second GENERATION?

She was great, but I think the credit probably belongs to the current occupant of the White House. Of all our institutions, the White House Press Corp was outraced only by the Republican Party in prostrating itself before the golden bullshitter. The speed of the fall underlines how rotten the institution was to begin with.

Steve Benen is now reporting that Trump is reportedly “afraid” to visit a combat zone because he fears people who want to kill him.

My first thought: I would be afraid to visit a combat zone, too, but I am not the fucking president.
Thought 2: It’s a good thing Barack Obama and family never had to worry about anything like that. Except for every single day.
3: Trump and his lying, cheating, stealing, treasonous family need to be gone.
4: Not to mention his entire administration. Plus the entire Republican party.

It’s becoming difficult not to like Congresswoman Elect AOC, particularly given that she seems more level headed and knowledgeable about working in a coalition than my current shithead Representative who doesn’t have the excuse of being a freshman Congressperson and has a secure enough position that Pelosi bashing is not justified from a political calculus standpoint.

Only months ago, Facebook launched a new advertising campaign on its own behalf called “Here Together.” The point was to remind everybody what they liked about Facebook before it became synonymous with fake news, Russian information operations, facilitator of ethnic cleansings or semi-genocides and pervasive privacy violations.

I thought that campaign was quite laughable. Basically, it was, “Here’s all the things you used to do before you became a Facebook addict, and we’re going to pretend we made social interaction possible instead of a resource to us to pillage.”

For many of us the first experience with Facebook was a way you could keep in touch with people you might never have been in touch with again — friends from high school, college, different phases of your life you’d separated from because of a move or a change of a job. You get the idea. This was a real thing about Facebook, all the other shortcomings or schlockiness notwithstanding. Unsurprisingly, Facebook wanted to get back to that, or at least wanted to get back to people thinking of Facebook like that.

That was always the Trojan Horse component of Facebook. For reasons I am still fascinated with but cannot figure out, some people could smell the subterfuge immediately, while a great deal of others bought in whole-hog.

Facebook’s core problem is that it was a platform based on trust.

Facebook’s core problem is that is a platform based on manipulation. Facebook tries to manipulate your behavior for their gain, and if the dark side of social behavior is the result, well too bad as long as your using Facebook. Operationally the “trust” component is no different than the way a confidence trickster uses it.

It’s an eye makeup technique. They’re funny all by themselves, just by definition.

Smokey eyes exude a sense of power.
And I absolutely love to acquire that. When it comes to a signature makeup look, smokey eyes is my go to. Of course, the right occasion and technique are quite important for the smokey eye. You can’t just wear a heavy black smokey eye to a wedding (unless it’s a goth-themed wedding like the one from 27 Dresses). There’s a time and place for everything. I remember back in high school I got my hands on a black eyeshadow. Not only did I wear it heavily during the day, but I didn’t even blend it!

I will confess that I had never heard of smoky eye before that day, and I still have no idea what the reference to Sanders meant. I even googled it and still never really got it.

When Huckabee first appeared as the official answerer of questions, she looked like a regular person (as regular as a Huckabee could look). Then Scaramooch made a comment about her appearance, and apparently trump watched her on TV, and decided she needed a makeover.

After that, every appearance she had more and more makeup caked on. Mascara, lashes, eyeshadow, eyeliner… she looked like the makeup person from Fox had been deputized to transform her into trump’s idea of what a woman is supposed to look like (see: Melania).

After Michelle Wolf’s joke about her makeup, I notice she’s toned it down and rebelled against the makeover. She probably yelled “Ya’ll makin’ me look like a harlot!”

ACOSTA's press pass is officially back, the White House says … along with new formal rules for press conferences, including "a single question" per reporter (follow-ups at the president or press secretary's discretion)— Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) November 19, 2018

So all the hubbub about the first shady using a personal email account ijkfamily.com ignores what Jared may have done via back channels. She’s as grifty as her pap, but I suspect that theirs plenty of reach around to all manner of Qatar, SA, Eric Prince with Jared’s finger prints on it.
Thoughts?

We’re on vacation this week in Los Angeles. We’re visiting my brother in law who is a building contractor with a giant house, but we’re not staying with him because he’s sort of a jerk. We’re staying at a tiny efficiency at the beach, but I’m making my 16 year old take the Hollywood tour with me today. I think he needs to ride around in an “open air bus” with his mom :)

He’s a good sport but this is really testing the limits of his patience.

you could keep in touch with people you might never have been in touch with again

I may be different than most, but the people I’ve never been in touch with again fall into that category for a reason.

It’s funny, Facebook got started when one of my kids was in college, in an Ivy that got on the bandwagon very early. First few years, if you recall, you needed an .edu e-mail address to sign up, which I had, so I could have registered. But my kids made it clear that that was not something they wanted me to do. By the time it opened up to everyone, it was clear to me I had no interest anyway. By now, my kids are at an age where having a parent there wouldn’t be an issue, yet they very seldom use FB themselves.

@germy: @Kay: Thanks, I finally get it! After your replies I googled what was actually said at the dinner and I saw a lovely display of a woman with one smoky eye and one regular eye, which also helped.

Then, I found this:

Emily Nussbaum
✔
@emilynussbaum
Wow. The idea that MW’s joke “called out” Sander’s eye makeup is madness. She PRAISED her eye makeup—she said it was a “perfect smokey eye”—she just pointed out that it was made of the ashes of burned lies. Which it is! Both

David Johnson, chairman of the Columbiana County (Ohio) GOP, posted images of the inferno Sunday with the message: “God’s Punishment to Liberal California.” Another message superimposed over a photo read: “Hell on Earth, brought to you by the liberals in California.”

There are! But he’s spent the whole time texting photographs of scenic views to his girlfriend. We give him a long leash at home so he’s been boarding all over the beach..towns..whatever they are- by himself since we got here. He’s done fine. He’s found his way back to this odd little apartment which is sort of behind a giant beach house down an alley. Yesterday he went out with his paltry Taco Bell earnings on his debit card and ended up at the library- I think that’s all he can afford :)

I may be different than most, but the people I’ve never been in touch with again fall into that category for a reason.

DING DING DING DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER!!!

It still is amazing to me that people can say, “Oh, I didn’t have this person in my life and now because of this technology I do again!” I and I think, “Well, how much did this person mean to you if you let them leave your life in the first place?”

Psychologically, I think two things are going on:

* People have vastly different bar heights when it comes to applying the term “friend” to a given relationship. Some people use it for damn near everyone they know, and others (like me) reserve it for very few, with whom they have an active, socially intimate, in-person relationship. I have seen myself described (in-print, no less) as a “good friend” or a “close friend” by people I only know casually.

* Zuckerberg’s true brilliance was in understanding that he could take this low-bar view and turn friendship itself into a commodity to be collected and hoarded. Facebook made friendship appear to be quantifiable, and the scoreboard was the hook. The users could hoard friends, and then FB could raid that resource.

The whole thing stunk high-heaven from the very beginning, but apparently we Cassandras will remain unpopular for the rest of time.

For reasons I am still fascinated with but cannot figure out, some people could smell the subterfuge immediately, while a great deal of others bought in whole-hog.

It’s fascinating to me too. I have never trusted Facebook but have had a hard time explaining that to people. It’s been kind of interesting to see events catch up with what I’ve been saying for a long time. I even know a few people who have deleted their accounts. Where are they going to go? MySpace? LOL.

@different-church-lady: I just recently went though a work-related nearly-mandatory touchy-feely kind of exercise (CliftonStrengths, for anyone who’s interested) and one of the sentences from my profile was “instinctively, you select your friends with great care.” So, yeah.

@Dorothy A. Winsor: I saw you mention this the other day. I’m fascinated by it. Why is he making you watch them? Does he think they’re just that good? Some technological marvel he wants to dissect with the family? Fantastic storytelling he thinks you might like to incorporate into your writing? Why is he doing this?

@different-church-lady: @Yarrow: Me three. I don’t see the need to be FB friends with the mother of school friend from grades 8-10. Nothing against her but I just don’t see the reason. That was an actual invite even though I am not on FB.

@schrodingers_cat: All social media platforms encourage people to simply dump their entire contact list right into the platform. That’s how they “connect” you to others. Then they encourage the users to value numbers over quantity — the counter goes up and you get a dopamine hit (this is not my term, one of the principles used it last year in repentance), and you start going further and further down the list to collect more “friends” until one reaches the point of absurdity you describe — the monkey pushes the lever an ever-increasing number of times trying to get the next packet of cocaine to come out.

Facebook does not care who your friends are, or what quality the relationship you have with those “friends” is. Facebook only cares that you become “friends” with as many people as possible, because that creates more of the resource they’re trying to mine.

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FOX & FRIENDS: Mr governor-elect, what do you say to people who say you cheated by canceling 1.4 million people off voter rolls since 201?
@BrianKempGA: “Well, you know, I’m moving on. I’m the governor-elect. The election has been certified…this is just political rhetoric.”

Remember- The norm violation isn’t “canceling” 1.4 million voters, the norm violation is pointing it out.

Norms are just understandings. Informal bargains. Protecting “the norm” without protecting the substantive issue behind the norm is obscene. It’s hollow. Makes a mockery of the norm. Kemp violated the public trust. The norm is gone. Insisting it still stands is just protecting the powerful.

We need new and enforceable laws to protect these voters because the norm failed. It didn’t hold. It collapsed.

@zhena gogolia: Came very close last year to rounding on a perfect stranger in line at a cafeteria who was mansplaining to his lunch companion what Hilary did wrong. This was on a military base where I was working as a civilian. It was when he said “She should know about how to handle classified material” that I almost rounded on him. “AND SO SHOULD YOU. AND IF YOU HAVE AN OUNCE OF BRAINS IN YOUR HEAD YOU KNOW DAMNED WELL THIS WAS A MINOR DATA SPILLAGE, AND YOU KNOW THAT DATA SPILLAGES ARE A ROUTINE ADMINISTRATIVE THING, WE’VE ALL BEEN BRIEFED ON THE ROUTINE PROCEDURES, AND YOU YOURSELF PROBABLY HAVE BEEN THE SOURCE OR VICTIM OF MORE THAN ONE. AND NOBODY IS SENDING YOU TO EMAIL JAIL.”

But I didn’t. Just fumed quietly, ate my lunch, and shortly after (unconnected) retired from that world.

How great is it that the GOP governors-elect ran blatantly racist campaigns to get into power and they’re now demanding we all forget that and believe they will treat their black and Latino constituents equitably and fairly now that they won?

The burden is on THEM. It’s not my job to give them legitimacy. They’ll have to earn it. They can’t ride on “norms” they themselves violated. This is what they count on- they can break all the rules and everyone else will follow the rules. They RELY on the norm police. The tactic doesn’t work without it.

If the norm was actually operative we wouldn’t be being lectured to observe it. It’s gone. Pass some laws to replace the norms they violated, or get screwed again. People like Kemp and the Trumps rely on exactly this- everyone else will follow the rules, which means they get an edge when they break them.

David Johnson, chairman of the Columbiana County (Ohio) GOP, posted images of the inferno Sunday with the message: “God’s Punishment to Liberal California.” Another message superimposed over a photo read: “Hell on Earth, brought to you by the liberals in California.”

@A Ghost To Most: Both the city of Paradise and Butte County are hard-right R+ Republican.

Why is this suddenly big news now? There have been repeated reports of the WH Trumpsters, Trump family and associates, using private email accounts for official business since they entered office. And Trump’s use of an ordinary, unsecured cell phone. And from those past reports, it wasn’t all Ivanka discussing with friends and family what color outfit to wear, why daddy’s tie goes down to his knees, birthday cakes, and what kind of insulting jacket Melania should wear on a politically sensitive trip.